IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”

Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

Fortunately – due to an immediate avalanche of horrible press that left the bureaucrats feeling like cockroaches caught in the middle of a room when the light gets turned on – the Department of Human Services did a quick tap dance backward. They said they only threatened her because a neighbor had complained (I mean, the NERVE of that awful Snyder woman who takes those kids into her home to help other working parents keep their children safe!). And the Department of Human Services is really the bastion of common sense – and not at ALL the kind of agency that would go psycho on a terrific neighborhood saint.

That’s the thing about government regulations. Bernie Madoff gets away undetected for years while he steals $65 billion, and Lisa Snyder gets nailed for keeping kids safe in her home until school opens.

We’re the government, and we’re here to help.

Let’s have about 50,000 more regulations that make even LESS sense than that one. Let’s put the government in charge of the health care system.

Vote for ObamaCare, and you’ll get all the bureaucracies, committees (and don’t forget all the various types of committees, such as special committees and standing committees; and whatever you do, don’t forget the myriad, subcommittees), panels, working groups, etc. etc. ad infinitum, that you could ever hope for.

I mean, if you want to make an appointment with your doctor, this is clearly the process you should want to follow, isn’t it?:

There’s a line from a Chuck Schwab commercial: the stock broker says to win your confidence: “Trust me. I make money when you make money.” And that’s true. But of course, what he almost always fails to tell you is that he also makes money when you LOSE money, withdraw money, or when your money just sits in his portfolio not doing anything. And that clarification changes the whole picture: he’s not on YOUR side, benefiting only when YOU benefit; he’s on HIS side, structuring the game so that he wins no matter WHAT happens to you.

And don’t think for a nanosecond that that isn’t exactly what politicians are doing with your health care.

In the same spirit, when your big government liberal tells you that the “public option” will cover you for life, just remember this one little detail:

The problem with the liberal-glorified cash-for-clunker program was always obvious to anyone who would but contemplate: the spike in sales merely robbed future sales, or delayed past ones.

My own parents waited for at least a couple months to buy a car for the program to go into effect. Ultimately they walked away from it due to the massive aggravations of the program (my father is a very patient man unless and until things stop making sense – at which time he starts to lose it) and decided to keep their “clunker” until they needed to buy a new car.

The funny thing is, they very likely would have already bought a new car had it NOT been for the cash-for-clunker program.

U.S. auto sales likely fell in September back to the nearly three-decade lows of early 2009 without government incentives to spur buying, leaving in doubt the timing and pace of a recovery for the battered industry.

Nearly 700,000 new cars and trucks were bought by U.S. customers through the government “cash for clunkers” incentive program from late July through the first three weeks of August, a leap from recession-stunted sales earlier in 2009. […]

“There are still a lot of obstacles out there,” she said. “I think we are still going to see the hangover from ‘cash for clunkers’ both in September and almost potentially through the end of the year.”

Sales Drop at All Major Automakers

U.S. auto industry sales rose 1 percent to more than 1.2 million vehicles in August from a year earlier under the “clunkers” program, the first time monthly sales pierced the 1 million mark in a year.

However, none of the largest manufacturers are expected to post sales gains in September, and Edmunds has forecast a 23 percent industry sales decline for the month.

The August sales gain represented a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 14.1 million vehicles, but did little to turn the tide on annual sales. U.S. auto industry sales were down nearly 28 percent through August 2009 versus last year.

Global Insight expects U.S. September auto sales to come in at a 9.33 million seasonally adjusted annualized rate, or well below the 12.5 million unit rate from a year ago when credit markets froze in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse.

The median forecast for U.S. auto industry sales was 9.5 million vehicles from 41 economists surveyed by Reuters, while J.P. Morgan believes the annualized rate could drop to 8.9 million vehicles — the lowest month since December 1981. […]

C4C disrupted the even flow of supply and demand. New car buyers held back in advance of the launch of the program; in fact, many prenegotiated with dealers to do so. And, now the promotion is over, expect year-on-year sales to be lower than they would have been because so much consumer demand has been concentrated in the promotion period.

The auto industry received a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over. The program apparently boosted sales by about 750,000 cars this year, but that probably means that sales over the next few years will be about 750,000 lower. The program probably further damaged the longer-term prospects of auto dealers and automakers by diverting their attention from market fundamentals in the scramble for federal cash.

Poor people – who couldn’t afford to buy a new car with the cash for clunker incentive – will also now lose out on billions of dollars’ worth of used cars that were destroyed under the program. The price of the cars that would have improved their lives (and their mileage) were shipped to China as scrap metal. And law of supply and demand guarantees that the price of used cars will go up for the people Democrats always say they’re trying to help.

The cash for clunkers program ought to sound eerily familiar to people who’ve done any reading about the Great Depression, because it was the same kind of program that led to the slaughter of hogs under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was intended to raise hog prices but led to famine instead). The issue here is the same one as back then: the profound arrogance of economic planners who think if they just get enough data, and they turn all the diodes exactly the right way, and if they get all the right memos and all the right forms, that they’re going to be smarter than free market would be.

Big government liberals invariably believe they know how to allocate resources better than markets do — just like the Marxist economic planners did. And the problem is like that fairy tale about the old woman who swallowed a fly; every single solution they come up with just creates another problem, and then you get this continual snowball effect that just keeps getting more insolvable.

And thus it is with the cash for clunkers thing. Maybe some of these people who bought a new car didn’t really need a new car; what they really needed was a new refrigerator or a new washing machine – but they got such a great deal on that car! The government knows better that they needed to buy a new car more than they needed to buy a new refrigerator or a washing machine or a host of other products. And so the government artificially incentivized people to buy the car that they really didn’t need. And instead of buying all the things that they really should have bought and WOULD have bought anyway WITHOUT the billions in taxpayer dollars, now people have taxpayer-funded cars they really didn’t need to buy.

So, as an example, were told that “Durable goods orders show unexpected decrease in August,” but it shouldn’t have been “unexpected” at all. What it was was the opportunity costs due to all the people buying cars instead of other goods. Like refrigerators and washing machines.

And at the same time, all we’ve really done is rob demand from a couple of years down the road, where these people were almost by definition ultimately going to buy new cars anyway. Why? Because they have CLUNKERS, dammit!

In case you think this is just too bizarre to be real, you’re wrong. Here are the 135 pictures, available via an official White House flikr site. They were taken during a reception at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, New York.

Either we elected an automaton owned, programmed, and operated by some George Soros-type billionaire, or else we elected the world’s phoniest human being.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he’s talked to President Obama only once since taking command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan over the summer, a revelation that drew swift criticism from some who are concerned that the president is putting off McChrystal’s request for more troops.

“It’s startling,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told FOX News.

McChrystal talked about his interaction with the president in an interview with CBS News.

“I’ve talked to the president since I’ve been here once on a (video teleconference),” he said.

“You talked to him once in 70 days?”CBS’ David Martin asked.

“That’s correct,” McChrystal said.

McChrystal, who warned in a recent assessment of the war in Afghanistan that the United States risks failure without more troops, submitted a request for more resources on Friday.

But the White House says it will review the overall strategy in Afghanistan before addressing troop levels.

The disclosure that the president and his top Afghanistan commander have spoken just once added to concerns that the administration is waiting too long to deal with the troop level issue.

Gregg said that former President George W. Bush spoke with his then-top Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus, on a regular basis. He said that while Obama may be speaking regularly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Petraeus, who is now head of Central Command, the president should still keep in regular contact with McChrystal.

“I would think you’d want to hear one-on-one from your field commander more than once in six months,” he said.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said he found it “extraordinarily surprising” that McChrystal, once in regular contact with former Vice President Dick Cheney, has talked to Obama only once since taking command.

Of course, when President Ronald Reagan spoke to the Soviets, he stood for the greatest and most powerful ideals of American freedom and liberty and confronted the Soviets with their evil and their crushing of the human spirit. When President Barack Obama addressed America’s enemies, he offered his humblest apologies for everything we’ve done wrong to offend them.

Of course, President Reagan – who famously shared his vision regarding the Cold War as “We win, they lose” – was very different indeed from a President who recently said:

OBAMA: I’m always worried about using the word “victory” because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

That Barack Obama will make his decision regarding commitment to Afghanistan without even bothering to speak to the general he himself selected to lead the war there is an insult not only to General Stanley McChrystal and to our troops under his command, but to basic common sense itself.

“I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month,” Obama proclaimed in a major foreign policy address on July 15, 2008. “And that’s why, as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just.

But now, just six months later, Obama is hiding from his generals and refusing to even LOOK AT his own General’s (Gen. Stanley McChrystal) troop request which will be necessary to carry out Obama’s own strategy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama doesn’t even want to look at it yet.

Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:

“Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.”

In interviews with McClatchy last week, military officials and other advocates of escalation expressed their frustration at what they consider “dithering” from the White House. Then, while Obama indicated in television interviews Sunday he isn’t ready to consider whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, someone gave The Washington Post a classified Pentagon report arguing more troops are necessary to prevent defeat.

Those officials said that taking time could be costly because the U.S. risked losing the Afghans’ support. “Dithering is just as destructive as 10 car bombs,” the senior official in Kabul said. “They have seen us leave before. They are really good at picking the right side to ally with.”

The roaring mouse has been replaced by a timid, weak, pandering, patronizing, appeasing – and most certainly DITHERING – president.

Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.

The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 26 this way: “[T]he Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran… They have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran… Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

Remember that pandering, appeasing, pathetic weakness when Iran gets the bomb and the ballistic missile system to deliver it. Remember that when they launch wave after wave of terror attack with impunity. Remember that when they shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send the price of gasoline skyrocketing to $15 a gallon.

It’s interesting. Two-plus years ago prior to the 2006 election, polls showed Republicans were in critical territory, but most Republicans and conservative commentators dismissed the marshaling evidence. And as a result, Republicans were stunned when Democrats took over both the House and the Senate.

Now, just months after assuming total control over the government, Democrats are in the same (if not an even more leaky) boat – and they are even more adamantly in denial than the Republicans had been before they lost power.

The tea party protesters have been mocked and trivialized as “tea baggers” for months now. During the August recess town hall debates, ObamaCare opponents were attacked as “swastika-toting” Nazis and as “AstroTurf.” And when at least one million and as many as two million (National Parks Service spokesman Dan Bana said, “It is a record…. We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever” – which would include the Obama inauguration), the left literally pretended it didn’t happen.

Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and the lowest level of support yet measured.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed. […]

Intensity has been with the opposition from the beginning of the public debate. Currently, among all voters 23% Strongly Favor the legislative effort and 43% are Strongly Opposed.

You’ll be getting a whole lot less. But don’t think you won’t be paying a whole lot more for the privilege of getting a whole lot less.

And you may even be going to jail for the “privilege” of ObamaCare.

The Provocateur explains how the mushrooming lies surrounding the Democrats’ health care plans will actually end up in jail time for many Americans:

Anyone that’s still not convinced that the Baucus bill is rotten should be convinced after they read this latest discovery.

Under the health care bill being considered in the Senate Finance Committee,Americans who fail to pay a penalty for not buying insurance could be charged up to $25,000 by the Internal Revenue Service or face up to a year in jail, according to congressional analysts.

To understand how this can happen you need to follow the wonky nature of the bill and our tax code. It’s important because the so called logic reveals just how perverted not only the Baucus bill is but the Democrats’ philosophy on health care.

Under the Baucus bill, health insurance is no longer optional. It’s not even a right but rather a mandate. In other words, if you’re living, you have to heave health insurance. If you don’t have health insurance, the government penalizes you. The penalty has been changed once and currently that’s as much as $1900. This penalty will be assessed by the IRS.

This is no small point because the president argued that this penalty is NOT a tax. That’s important because the President ad nauseum promised not to raise taxes on anyone that earns less than $200,000 yearly. Of course, if this penalty were considered a tax, then this would break his promise. Of course, if the IRS is the one imposing the fee/penalty, it’s hard to see this penalty as anything but a tax.

Now, let’s follow the logic. Health insurance is now a mandate. If you don’t pay it, you pay a penalty. If you don’t pay the penalty, you are now evading your taxes. Tax evasion is a crime, just ask Al Capone. So, all those that refuse or can’t pay for their health insurance and refuse or can’t pay the fine for refusing are now considered the same kind of criminal as Al Capone once was. Such is the logic of President Obama and the Democrats.

Let me return to Cuba–and all the other communist totalitarian dictatorships along with it. Do you seriously believe that the millions of human beings who have been oppressed and dehumanized under these systems knew what they were going to receive? Do you believe that the supporters of Marxism told the truth, and explained to the people what the system was going to yield?

They were fed lies, and when they believed those lies, they fell prey to an oppressive yoke that they could not throw off.

And lies abound about this takeover of 1/6th of the American economy:

Last Sunday, Barack Obama proved that he is a liar by refusing to call what is clearly a tax a tax. And Obama’s own hometown newspaper proves the obvious.

Last Tuesday, the Democrat-approved Congressional Budget Office laid out Obama’s lie that Medicare would not be cut:

The purpose of this amendment is simple. If the secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that more than 1 million Americans would lose the current coverage of their choice because of this bill, then this bill would not go into effect.

It seems like a very, very simple but perfect amendment for those of us who have integrity. This amendment is simply trying to safeguard President Obama’s pledge to the American people, you’ll get — that you will get to keep what you have.

And the Democrats failed the test.

Every single Democrat in the Finance Committee voted against it. Every single one.

One of President Obama’s mantras with regard to the Democrats’ health care proposal (whatever it turns out to be) is that if you like your present health insurance coverage, you will get to keep it. More recently, when the fraudulent nature of that pledge was revealed, he changed the formula to “the bill won’t require you to lose your coverage.” That’s right; it won’t require you to lose your coverage, it will just cause you to lose your coverage.

Don’t think for a second Democrats and President Obama don’t know what a pack of liars they are.

Last Sunday, Barack Obama proved that he is a liar by refusing to call what is clearly a tax a tax. And Obama’s own hometown newspaper proves the obvious.

Last Tuesday, the Democrat-approved Congressional Budget Office laid out Obama’s lie that Medicare would not be cut:

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

The Democrats’ shocking deceit – and Barack Obama’s own personal deceptions and lies – are incredible. They will literally say ANYTHING to get their terrible plan passed.

Please don’t trust these liars to take over 1/6th of the U.S. economy during a period when the economy is already in deep trouble. And please don’t turn the lives of seniors over to a plan that will literally kill many of them.

Barack Obama: President Pantywaist restores the satellite states to their former owner

By Gerald Warner Last updated: September 18th, 2009

Barack Obama’s chances of re-election in three and a half years’ time may be evaporating at unprecedented speed, but his presidential ambitions could still be realised in another direction. He would be a shoo-in to win the next Russian presidential election, so high is his popularity now running in the land of the bear and the knout. Obama has done more to restore Russia’s hegemonial potential in Eastern and Central Europe than even Vladimir Putin.

His latest achievement has been to restore the former satellite states to dependency on Moscow, by wimping out of the missile defence shield plan. This follows on his surrender last July when he voluntarily sacrificed around a third of America’s nuclear capability for no perceptible benefit beyond a grim smile from Putin. If there is one thing that fans the fires of aggression it is appeasement.

Despite propaganda to the contrary, 58 per cent of Poles were in favour of the missile shield. But small nations must assess the political will of larger powers. Thanks to President Pantywaist’s supine policies, the former satellite states can see that they are fast returning to their former status. The American umbrella cannot be relied upon on a rainy day. They have been here before. Poles remember how a leftist US president sold them out to Russia at Tehran and Yalta. The former Czechoslovakia was betrayed twice: in 1938 and 1945.

If the word is out that America is in retreat, it will soon find it has no friends. The satellites will pragmatically accept their restored subordination, without openly acknowledging it, and co-operate with their dangerous neighbour, ushering in a new generation of Finlandisation.

Bringing unstable states like Georgia into Nato would be a liability, not a defence. The crazy notion of a US-Nato-Russian combined defence policy has all the staying power of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Ronald Reagan, assisted by Margaret Thatcher, implemented the sensible principle that Russia, from the time of Peter the Great, respects only strength and steely political will. A pushover in the Oval Office is the best news Russian expansionists have heard since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Barack Obama is selling out America and, by extension, the entire West. This is a catastrophe for America and the wider world.

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were every bit as amazing:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”